The Boston Foundation is underwriting the plaintiffs’ law firm at the center of the Boston Globe’s story Two Mass. families sue famed literacy specialists, claiming reading curriculums were intentionally flawed. The Globe never mentions that. That dereliction masks the efforts of moneyed interests to wrest decision making from elected bodies and mold K-12 education to their liking.
The lawsuit is a consumer protection action against private parties, not the state or school districts. Plaintiffs’ attorney Benjamin Elga of public interest law firm Justice Catalyst Law Inc. told the Globe “We’re laser-focused on how can we get the right curriculum for kids going forward in Massachusetts and hopefully beyond.” The lawsuit could snatch control of curriculum from local school districts and place the power to “get the right curriculum for kids” and the field’s “massive profits” (Complaint, para. 42) in the hands of . . . whom? The complaint asks the court to order the defendants to provide “an early-literacy curriculum that sufficiently reflects and incorporates the science of reading free of charge.” (Complaint, Prayer for Relief).
Surely tBF has an opinion on that topic. It is very nearly the sole underwriter of Justice Catalyst Law Inc. With a caveat—tBF operates on a fiscal year, JCLI on a calendar year–let’s use publicly available Form 990 tax returns to gauge the influence tBF has on JCLI.
| Year | JCLI Total Donations and Contributions | tBF Contribution |
| 2022 | $2,185,000 | $2,045,000 |
| 2021 | $1,400,000 | $1,050,000 |
| 2020 | $1,400,000 | $1,525,000 |
| Total | $4,985,000 | $4,620,000 |
In FY 2023, which ended June 30, 2024 tBF gave JCL another $1,490,000.
As I showed in The Globe Puffs Up Another Dubious “Science of Reading” Program, tBF has underwritten efforts to privatize K-12 education in Massachusetts, including investing $2,660,000 in pro-charters Families for Excellent Schools from 2014-2017, as FES prepped for the 2016 charter schools ballot question. tBF continues to fund privatization fronts. Its FY 2023 990 shows $127,000 going to Educators for Excellence, $15,000 to Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education, $85,000 to Massachusetts Charter Public School Association, Inc., and $70,000 to Education Reform Now (DFER).
We don’t know if tBF funds JCL out of a general fund or a donor advised fund (DAF), a vehicle in which a donor may contribute to a DAF under tBF’s management, reap the tax benefits, and then direct where the money goes without it being attributed to that specific donor.
In my book Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization I recount how Rupert Murdoch donated at least $1,000,000 to Democrats for Education Reform. Murdoch didn’t care about Democrats, but he did care that DFER was campaigning to expand charter schools in New York. Murdoch didn’t care about kids, but he did care that he had bought an education technology company that he hoped would profit from changes in New York City. Murdoch estimated education as a $500 billion market nationally. The Globe reports that the defendants in the consumer protection suit “made at least $1.6 billion in sales in the 2010s.” That would be a tempting market. The defendants will be laser-focused to defend their share of that market, too.
People who care about K-12 education (rather than business profits) should be laser-focused on who is behind the push to get the “right curriculum” for Massachusetts schools, and exactly what that “right curriculum” might look like. That road currently ends in a blind alley outside of the Boston Foundation.
The unwillingness of the media to follow the money confers great benefit on wealthy individuals and families. The organizations they fund through their foundations, even if transparently phony like National Parents Union, are taken at face value and accorded respect. For example, in The Globe Puffs Up Another Dubious “Science of Reading” Program I noted that the One8 Foundation funded “research” into a science of reading program the Globe was pushing. The paper did not inform readers that One8’s wealthy principals have been tied to school privatization and anti-teachers union campaigns since at least 2009.
Even if the Boston Foundation had been disclosed as the funder behind the suit, tBF and other foundations are presented as presumptively public spirited. I argue that insofar as they fund interest groups and, in some cases, create these interest groups, that the identities and interests of the funders themselves are fair game. Time and again we’ve seen the Globe’s reporting (and op-eds and columns like a recent one by Marcela García I’ll eventually get to) advocate against democratic processes on K-12 policy. Unstated is that if democratically accountable control recedes the power would gravitate toward unaccountable wealthy interests such as tBF, the Walton family of Arkansas, Amos Hostetter of the Barr Foundation in Boston (which also funds the Globe‘s education reporting), and the funders of One8, among others.
tBF is a well-established, historical, rich, and powerful institution. As Robert Reich wrote in Just Giving: Why Philanthropy Is Failing Democracy and How It Can Do Better, “philanthropy”—for good or not-so-good—amplifies the voices of the rich and powerful. tBF engages in efforts to frame public policy. It should be covered like any other interest. Whatever happened to speaking truth to power?
Money never sleeps. Follow the money.
“One thing big money typically lacks is credibility, which is why those who deploy it work so hard to cover their tracks.”—Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson
[Full disclosure: as a (now retired) educator in the UMass system, I am a union member. I write about dark money, democracy, and oligarchy. My book, Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization, is in print.]